Today in Cold War History
1947 : Following the vote by the United nations to create two states, one Jewish and one Arab in Palestine ( 1947 UN Partition Plan ), riots break out in Jerusalem when the Arab Higher Committee declare a three-day strike and public protest against the United nations ruling.
1954 : The US Senate votes to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R Wis., for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute”.
1954 – The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Taiwan, is signed in Washington, D.C.
1956 : The yacht Granma arrives on the shores of Cuba after travelling from Mexico where Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the Cuban Revolution movement disembark to begin the Cuban Revolution.
1957 : Aiichiro Fujiyama, foreign minister of Japan, strenuously protested American restrictions on Japanese exports to the United States. He asserted that Japan was the biggest importer of American goods and limiting Japan’s exports was “a matter of life or death” for his country.
1961 : On a national radio broadcast in Cuba Fidel Castro declares that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was to adopt Communism
1967 : Egyptian anti-aircraft armaments shot down two Israeli planes near Suez City. This was the first skirmish between Egypt and Israel since Israel demolished Egypt’s oil refineries.
1969 : The Boeing 747 ( Often Known as Jumbo Jet ) a long-haul, wide body commercial airliner receives its FAA airworthiness certificate paving the way for its introduction into commercial service in 1970
1974 : Suspected IRA Terrorists plant bombs in two central Birmingham pubs, killing 19 people and injuring over 180.
1979 : A mob in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, has burned the US Embassy to the ground, killing a US marine
1990 : Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s center-right coalition won the first free elections since 1932 for a combined East and West Germany.
1991 – Canada and Poland become the first nations on earth to recognize the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union.